


The night tells the truth

by Sustraiak



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blue and Ronan are superfriends, Book 2: The Dream Thieves, Canon Compliant, Contradictions that make sense, Joseph Kavinsky is His Own Warning, M/M, Sort Of, Supernatural Anger, Teen Anger, The Raven King Spoilers, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 12:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18208535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sustraiak/pseuds/Sustraiak
Summary: Kavinsky has something to offer.Ronan has something to learn.They both have something to unlearn.





	The night tells the truth

**Author's Note:**

> Original Spanish version [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16460591)

“ _Nothing held me back. I shed and went._

_Toward pleasures that were_

_both in reality and in myself,_

_through the illuminated night._

_And drank strong wine, as_

_only the bold drink pleasure.”_

\--Konstantin Kavafis, 1913.

 

 

That day, Ronan went to church. It wasn’t Sunday; only a few old ladies listened to the sermon, scattered amongst the pews with scant presence. Ronan headed towards the altar and he sat down in the front row. The priest looked sideways at him, his face marked by a bloody scratch, of uncertain origin, the hoodie ripped at the cuffs. Ronan sharpened his gaze for a moment, and then he closed his eyes.

 

He wasn’t afraid of falling asleep, not even after _that_ night. He couldn’t do it in the eyes of God, judging him _guilty._ The reading, from the Old Testament, described a conversation between Yahveh and Satan (“Where have you come from?” “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”). Ronan squeezed his eyes shut, got down on his knees. He couldn’t look for God’s forgiveness. Not with his veins pulsing that way, eager to dream, to touch, to speed up, to _roam throughout the earth._ It wasn’t a heavy guilt. It just seemed to float on desire.

 

He got to Monmouth Manufacturing by noon, the bags beneath his eyes dark like bruises and the cut looking even worse. Noah gave him a concerned look, reached out for his cheek, and then he lost the expression, fading away. Ronan sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He opened the fridge, took a slice of bread, cold and tasteless. He barely chewed it, took a sip of water to help it down and then opened the cabinet above the sink. Gansey had arranged the medicine meticulously, all the labels facing inwards. But he didn’t have to search. He put a couple of anxiolytics under his tongue and waited a few minutes, preparing himself for a dreamless sleep.

 

*

 

He woke up from the buzz of his phone beside the mattress. The dying evening light grazed his eyelids, almost like a caress. He shook his head and saw the sender on the illuminated screen, _J. Kavinsky._ “ _Asshole_ ,” read the text, soberly.

 

Ronan considered the answer for a moment, then he typed, _“_ _Ba_ _stard_ ”.

 

He realized that his pulse had accelerated; he searched instinctively, impatiently, inside the pocket of his ruined hoodie. The pills Kavinsky had given him were there, motionless and cursed. Another buzz distracted him. “ _What are you gonna dream for me today, sweetie?_ ”

 

Ronan stared at the phone for a second, and then he threw it against the mattress. He turned the pocket inside out and the pills spilled out across the floor. Chainsaw startled and she started to approach the disaster cautiously.

 

“Get out, get out of here,” Ronan hissed, frantic, picking the pills back up and holding them in his clenched fist.

 

“ _A muzzle_ ”, he wrote, using his free hand.

 

The reply arrived immediately: a smiley face made up of a colon and a parenthesis. And some seconds later, “ _Waiting for you_ ”.

 

Ronan drove overwhelmed; he took the Henrietta beltway so he could hit the gas, so he could _breathe._ His body was pulsing in anticipation, as if he was already rising up out of himself and dreaming reality.

 

He didn’t ring the doorbell, he leaned against a column of the porch shamelessly and he texted, “ _At your door. Asshole_ ”.

 

The stupid idiot took his time. When Kavinsky opened the door, he flung, without giving him the time to react, a dog leash at his chest. Ronan caught it awkwardly.

 

“Didn’t know you were into kinky stuff,” he managed to say, pulling his smile up with his eyebrow.

 

Kavinsky said nothing, he just made an enigmatic twitch with his eyelashes. The silence became heavy, trapped in the gaps his body left against the doorframe; hands resting on both sides, stretching out his ripped tank top, leaving him more naked than it might consider decent, if that concept made any sense in his case.

 

Ronan reached out to give him the leash back but he showed no intention of taking it. Ronan snorted and used the hand he had put to his chest to push him aside.

 

Kavinsky gave him a self-satisfied grin and raised his hands with an innocent gesture. Ronan went in without ceremony, letting the chain fall to the floor, which emitted a heavenly sound against the tile. He hoped it’d cracked it.

 

The house had changed, or at least, he didn’t remember it like that. The room was dim, a dark carpet covered the most of the floor, and two zebra-striped couches faced each other as if there was something to say. A few liquor bottles rested on a coffee table, beside a small mirror and a razor blade. There were also some bright-colored pills. Ronan had that feeling again, along with a slight tachycardia, as if his body was going to collapse like a waterfall.

 

“So what,” he said, spinning back to face Kavinsky.

 

It took him a few seconds to realize that he’d sat down on one of the couches, arms laid out side to side, sunglasses on his head.

 

“What do you want: to dream or to freak out,” he said, in a dull voice.

 

Ronan started to get a bit agitated. He guessed Kavinsky meant the cocaine, or whatever the hell he’d just shoved up his nostrils. He noticed the 50 dollar bill on the floor. He frowned. Of course he wanted to get high in that den of darkness (of course he wanted get high with Kavinsky and blur the edges of the distance between them).

 

He took a step forward, but Kavinsky stood up without letting him answer. His eyelids fell and his lashes caressed his cheek delicately. He spotted that some freckles covered his nose. Kavinsky sharpened his gaze, ending the mirage abruptly. Ronan blinked.

 

“Or a little bit of everything,” Kavinsky said softly, getting close, getting too close, sticking out his tongue and putting an impossible pill on the tip.

 

Ronan felt his throat explode. He put his hand to his pocket as a reflex, despite there being nothing there. Kavinsky kept offering his tongue, long and poisonous as a snake. Ronan imagined himself taking the pill, using his teeth, connecting with the pain, connecting with the rawness of desire and diving far away, closer, perhaps, to where he _was._

 

“What the fuck are you doing, loser,” he said, his face taking on a disgusted expression.

 

Kavinsky narrowed his eyes and smiled scornfully. Holding his gaze, he spat the pill out hard to the side. Ronan followed its movement; it seemed to fall slowly, bouncing off the baseboard, and rolling beneath one of the couches. He regretted doing so more quickly than he’d ever have done with any of his sins.

 

“Well then, you lost your chance,” Kavinsky said, grabbing him by the shirt and thrusting him against the wall.

 

It was cold, and Ronan felt grateful for the violence against his back. Kavinsky was trying to look dangerous, but it was hard for him. His pulse thumped physically in his throat, just like Ronan’s, and there was something in his eyes that betrayed him. Ronan smiled. Kavinsky hadn’t hit him yet and Ronan was flooded by desire. Kavinsky hadn’t kissed him yet and Ronan was already scared to death.

 

“Come on,” Ronan dared him, drowning in his voice.

 

Kavinsky bit down on his lip and threw him a punch to the cheekbone. Ronan hit back and grabbed his wrists. He was stronger than him. He was so much weaker. Kavinsky always knew where he was.

 

Ronan tightened his grip; Kavinsky extended his fingers upwards in surrender and smirked.

 

“Fuck, Lynch, you sure are a loser,” he said, and then he kissed him.

 

Ronan kissed him back. What else could he fucking do, his body trembling like a rumble of thunder and the rest of the storm bursting out from his chest to his fingertips. He wished they burned Kavinsky’s wrists. He wished they made him not stop, without anything else having to happen. He wished there were traces of the pill on his tongue so he could dream of going on eating _hell, God, fucking Kavinsky’s_ mouth as if he hadn’t lost his mind.

 

Ronan released Kavinsky’s hands; Kavinsky pressed them lightly to Ronan’s neck. Ronan put, instinctively, a hand to his chest, and pushed him away.

 

“Don’t” Kavinsky whispered, as if he didn’t know what he’d just said, and returning hungrily to his mouth.

 

Ronan stopped breathing. Strangely enough, it wasn’t an aggressive kiss, despite the rub, the itching mouths. In that kiss, in that kiss _from Kavinsky_ , there was something that wasn’t dark, but tender. Ronan could hardly bear it. It felt like an overload of energy on the ley line, as if the skin of his soul was glowing red hot. He turned his face away, Kavinsky said _don’t_ again, absently, eyes closed. Who knows how stoned he was. He searched again for his mouth, Ronan pulled away from him sharply, shoving a hand into his pants.

 

Kavinsky moaned, startled, he didn’t smile, his eyes flashed back open for a second, and then he let himself be done. And doing this wasn’t difficult. Ronan knew, _Jesus fucking Christ_ , he knew what Kavinsky wanted as if he was dreaming him. However, it was the first time he touched a boy inside his underwear, and not because the image hadn’t tortured him even in the fucking prayer silences. Reality was different: dirtier, sharper, more absolute, more _fucking hell, I’m gonna have a heart attack._

 

Kavinsky leaned his head back and Ronan wanted him to come and, at the same time, to never come. Sex was a strange thing. Sex was something as intense as casual, as casual as conclusive. And Ronan was always scared of getting to know himself. He wondered if that would come out of that room. Knowing Kavinsky, the most sensible thing to do would have been to offer him a quite few blows and some threats. But, clearly, sex had nothing to do with being sensible.

 

Ronan pushed Kavinsky towards one of the couches, but Kavinsky stopped him and he slid down Ronan’s body to his knees. Without saying a thing, he undid Ronan’s pants and clutched his hips. Ronan imagined small bruises under his thumbs. He imagined two symmetrical tattoos that said _pleasure_ and _pain._ Then, Kavinsky opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue, and Ronan felt lightheaded, his knees weakening. The moment was too fleeting to contain all that and the magic of its contradiction. Everything was going to blow up. Just the way they liked it.

 

For a moment, the superficial meaning of the scene came to his mind: Kavinsky on his knees sucking him off, at his own place, the ultimate submission in the game of power they acted out, currently the talk of the town. But that wasn’t what was driving him so insane that he had to do his hardest to muffle the moans, the words, gentle words, dirty words; it wasn’t Kavinsky’s prostration that was turning him on so badly that he’d have been barely able to spell the alphabet.

 

It was that uncanny altruism. The position was insignificant when even the gravity seemed to have disappeared from the room. Kavinsky was offering him something (besides his carnal skills, because on top of that, the bastard was good at it), he was giving him something that until then had pursued him as a nightmare: the possibility of being with himself.

 

Ronan squeezed his eyelids, and then he studied him. His eyes were tightly closed in concentration; Christ, his lashes were such a fucking piece of art. He reached down for his face, felt the movement of his jaw, his gaze meeting him heavily. _Don’t stop,_ he thought to say, as though he could accept something like that from his most sworn enemy.

 

“Stop,” he said, drawing back his hand gently.

 

Kavinsky obeyed. He dropped his hands to the floor and rested a moment, gasping. Then, he stood up and stared at him, defiant. For a second, Ronan thought that he was going to smash his face in again, but he just put two fingers to his bottom lip. Ronan’s mouth fell open to say something, but Kavinsky shoved his fingers in, choking the words in the back of his throat.

 

“Let me,” he whispered, definitely as though he wasn’t his most sworn enemy.

 

Kavinsky pushed his fingers in and out of his mouth, at a pace that seemed a dance of Satan himself. Ronan responded, sucking them up to the beginning of the first knuckle, till they touched him so deep inside that there was no longer a place to hide. He was going to go to hell anyway.

 

Kavinsky pulled his shirt off, and then pulled off Ronan’s. He kissed him while he dealt with his pants, previously undone, the inside still damp from his saliva. Ronan stopped thinking about words to blaspheme again, and kissed him back. Kavinsky came down his neck as he finished undressing, sweet enough, cruel enough. Then, he pushed him onto the couch, falling on top of him, hips bumping, bellies fitting together. Ronan gripped his wrist, hard, he searched for his mouth blindly, bit it, Kavinsky groaned and jerked his hips, once, again, again, again. _Don’t stop_ , Ronan thought, and this time, he said it out loud.

 

He felt Kavinsky’s cum spilling warm against his navel, wild and vulnerable, a dream as his, a common dream in an inconceivably dissociated world. Kavinsky broke away with a strange expression, like he was holding back the tears, and then descended to Ronan’s pubis, resting a hand on his breastbone. Ronan grabbed his jaw to make him look up, Kavinsky shook his head and said, one more time, as if his life depended on it:

 

“Let me.”

 

Ronan nodded, moved, if he had been able to take it in, and he came as soon as he touched him with his mouth.

 

Kavinsky rested for a moment over Ronan’s body, pulsing, fitting. Then, he pulled off abruptly, and spat into a glass of leftover liquor.

 

Ronan sat up and sought the words, Kavinsky turned around. “Welcome to queer hell, fucker,” he said. “Holy shit, that took you long enough.”

 

*

 

That night, they did drugs together. Kavinsky asked him if he wanted to dream something, Ronan said no. They dilated time, melted their bodies. Kavinsky hadn’t put his shirt back on, Ronan followed his lines with his eyes, climbing, slipping. Kavinsky knew it. Kavinsky brushed him as his pupils dilated on the couch, and then he hurled some insult. Ronan sighed and did another line.

 

At sunrise, they took two diazepams each, to sleep without dreaming, to slow the heart down. Kavinsky dozed off on the carpet, curled up in a fetal position. Suddenly, he looked like a child. A fucking kid. Under the driving age in most countries out there. Ronan looked around. What a fucking mess. If Gansey had seen him at that moment, he would have kicked him out of Henrietta itself. If Adam-- God, if Adam had seen him at that moment, his heart would have stopped and the diazepam wouldn’t have been necessary. Blue would have been the only one who, if she had seen him at that moment, would have thrown a jacket over his shoulder and would have taken him home.

 

(He wished he could have said _don’t stop_ to Kavinsky, without anything else having to happen).

 

*

 

Ronan parked as well as he could on Fox Way and got out of the car, his heart staggering. Before closing the door, he left his phone in the dashboard console. He had turned it off as he left Kavinsky’s place.

 

The afternoon light was as sharp as a headache. Ronan sat down on a step at the entrance of number 300, deciding to do nothing in particular. After a while, Calla opened the door. Without a word, she sat beside him and lit a cigarette theatrically.

 

“Get out of here,” she said, after exhaling the first drag.

 

“I have to--” Ronan defended himself, wearily.

 

“Don’t care. You’re high in the porch of my house, where a minor resides. Get. Out.”

 

“I’m a minor too,” Ronan said reluctantly, getting up.

 

“I thought I had only one mother,” Blue interrupted from the doorway, arms folded. “I would appreciate it if you stopped trying to regulate my social activity.”

 

Calla rolled her eyes and took another drag from her cigarette.

 

“I tried,” she said, looking the other way.

 

“Come in,” Blue said to Ronan.

 

Once inside, Blue shut the door promptly and looked at him with suspicion.

 

“You have a slash on your face,” she informed.

 

“Don’t ask,” Ronan replied.

 

Blue raised her eyebrows and waited for another kind of answer. Ronan wondered if this had been a good idea. He liked Blue, but when she started preaching she was far worse than Gansey. The words were already sharpening in his throat when she turned around towards the kitchen.

 

“Wanna eat something?” she said, plainly.

 

Ronan blinked. His pulse was as irregular as a mouse’s.

 

“Er-- okay,” he answered, feeling his stomach as if it was in someone else’s body.

 

Blue sliced two pieces of some chocolate cake that was on the countertop and put them on a single plate. The murmuring of the women of the house mixed with the unceasing tone of an unanswered telephone and the sound of an old music device, playing what seemed like a New Age tape.

 

“Let’s go out to the yard,” Blue proposed, somehow complaining about the obvious lack of privacy.

 

She took the plate and a bottle of water and glanced at Ronan to check he was following. In the shade of the huge beech tree it was a bit cool, the breeze lifted up some leaves that foreboded the impossible autumn. Ronan got goose bumps.

 

“Wait a minute,” said Blue, leaving the plate and the bottle in his hands and heading back to the door.

 

Ronan sat on the ground, bending his joints as if he was an old rusty toy. Some minutes later, Blue came back with a jacket in her hands.

 

“Here,” she said casually.

 

It was a nice jacket, a black and plaid lined worn Harrington, probably inherited from a relative from the other side of the pond, or from a neighbor’s attic in the spring market. Ronan smiled briefly.

 

He put the jacket on, it suited him well. Blue, for her part, would have needed about four sizes smaller, but the feminist pin that hung from the lapel made it unmistakably hers. He leaned his back against the trunk of the beech tree and squeezed Blue’s shoulder in appreciation. The freshness and the roughness of the bark made him feel a little more alive, a being made of water rather than alcohol and gasoline. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a moment.

 

When he opened them again, he found Blue’s staring at him, black and deep and electrical, also happy to see him smile and rest. Sometimes, the very thought that some people cared about him, without even having a reason, made him feel sick. _I’m sorry_ , he thought without realizing, the image of a God turning his back on him in his mind.

 

Blue took a couple of bites from the cake and offered the plate to Ronan, who separated a tiny bit with his fingers. She narrowed her eyes.

 

“What exactly are you under the _influence_ of?” she asked.

 

“Cocaine and anxiolytics,” Ronan replied, putting the cake to his mouth. “And something I don’t know what it is.”

 

Blue scratched her nose.

 

“You know what can happen if you mix cocaine and anxiolytics, right?”

 

Ronan snorted.

 

“Look, you shrimp, I think I know drugs far better than you.”

 

“So, what you don’t--” Blue broke off.

 

Ronan knew what she was going to say. He heaved a sigh.

 

“So nothing,” he resolved, feeling the cake making him sick to his stomach. “Let’s see if it wears off,” he added.

 

Ronan felt that Blue choked a _why_ in the sigh that slipped from her throat. He decided to put an end to that.

 

“Listen, I have-- I have to tell you something.”

 

Blue’s eyes grew wide and she listened as if it was the gossip of the year.

 

“That doesn’t help,” Ronan protested.

 

“Come on, do tell me. Not like it’s going to go any further,” Blue said impatiently.

 

Ronan doubted that. He was used to people talking about him behind his back with concern, as if he was a problem child. Maybe he was.

 

“It’s Kavinsky who’s fucking up the forest,” he said. “He’s-- just like me.”

 

“Just like you?” Blue asked, as if she had just flipped a tarot card.

 

 _Just like me,_ Ronan thought, with a rush of longing and terror.

 

“He is-- he can-- he also pulls things out of dreams, and uses the energy from Cabeswater. I don’t think he’s stopping.”

 

Blue reflected on it for a moment. Ronan felt relief, he felt light, and the rustling of the beech leaves caressed him, as though Greywaren meant something related to balance instead of destruction. His heart was beating more easily. Now, it wasn’t just his business. Blue and Gansey and Adam and Noah would be with him, would be there, preventing him from going out at night to potentially end his life and helping him to find out his role in all this. (The other secret jostled in his mind, casting doubt on the feeling, but Ronan struggled to block it.)

 

“So, you’ve been doing drugs with Kavinsky,” Blue said, breaking the spell like she popped a soap bubble.

 

“Yeah, and he’s also sucked my dick,” Ronan replied bitterly.

 

He regretted it immediately. In any other case, that phrase, spoken as casually as it was, would have made him remain beyond suspicion. But not with Blue.

 

Blue let out a fake laugh, making it clear how unfunny she found the comment, and then she remained thoughtful. Ronan was sure that she had just tied up some loose end, the shithead. And then, you had to put up with her whining because she hadn’t inherited any gift.

 

“You want to tell me something?” Blue asked, very cautiously.

 

“Don’t trip out,” Ronan replied, quickly. “Do _you_ want to tell me something?”

 

Blue made the face everyone made when thinking of Adam.

 

 _Save it,_ Ronan thought intensely.

 

They kept quiet for a while. Ronan appreciated it. The leaves swayed again over his eyes, achingly beautiful.

 

“Why with him?” Blue muttered, eventually.

 

“Why with him _what,_ ” Ronan said, sharply.

 

Blue didn’t say anything else, but the question was already asked. Ronan felt it go down his throat and fall to his stomach. _Because he’s the only one I can do it with,_ he heard himself think, and also _that’s not true,_ somewhere deep within him.

 

“Do you want me to take you home?” Blue asked, poking him with her colorful boots.

 

Ronan looked one more time at the beech-tree leaves. _You are at home_ , they whispered.

 

*

 

Ronan had been entrenched for hours at the window of his room in Monmouth Manufacturing, watching the orange Camaro shine back at the sun its beautiful image. Fuck, every time he remembered where this car had come from, his heart started racing. He felt like a mother after giving birth. Destroyed and powerful and disproportionately happy.

 

When the time of Gansey and Adam’s return was nearing, he put on a t-shirt and went down for a ride in the Camaro, hoping to welcome them. Looking for the keys in his pocket, he touched the slippery feeling of some of Kavinsky’s pills. He went back into the house and emptied his pocket into the toilet. Then he scrunched up his pants and threw them in the trash. He couldn’t wear those nights stuck to his skin.

 

He didn’t give Gansey any kind of details about how he had found out that Kavinsky was _another_ Greywaren; Gansey didn’t ask. Ronan knew that the others sensed the fragility of his wellbeing. He thought about the original Camaro, wrecked against a telephone pole, all claws and panic and blood. He had to burn that. He would do it that very night.

 

It wasn’t difficult, he didn’t feel anything close to wanting to sleep. Lying on his back on his mattress, he flicked apathetically through the texts Kavinsky had sent him during the couple of days they hadn’t seen each other. It seemed, at the same time, that he was threatening him beyond the bounds of legality and that he was asking him on a date. Kavinsky was that versatile.

 

Ronan didn’t answer any of them. He knew that story couldn’t continue. But there was something else, something that made him want to leave things just like they were, just like they were that night, covering their bodies. Something that made him want to be able to think again of Kavinsky, before sleeping, and leave him behind in a dream, because dreams weren’t just places to steal, they were also places to _stay._

 

Kavinsky would never understand that, so Ronan turned off his phone again and threw it angrily against the pillow. He took the keys to his BMW, and sneaked out of Monmouth Manufacturing with a can of gas in his hand. Time to burn the past. Burning things was always alright.

 

He hoped the roar of the engine wouldn’t wake Gansey up. As he left the parking lot, he glanced back to see if any lights had been switched on in the building. Everything looked in its place. When he turned around, he saw a person in the passenger seat. Ronan braked so hard the wheels screamed and he swore in an elaborate way.

 

“Noah,” he gasped, “I’m gonna die sooner because of you.”

 

“Not because of me,” Noah told him off.

 

Ronan heaved a sigh. He stepped on the gas again, and for a moment enjoyed the headlight-illuminated dust, his car swallowing, swallowing, swallowing night.

 

“It’s not-- what you think.”

 

He put the headlights on full beam and shifted into fourth. The road wound up the hill and the BMW danced brusquely. Noah appreciated his ability to take the curves, and after the race with Kavinsky, he had to try to win him over.

 

“I have to do something,” he said. “You’ll like it.”

 

“Something with Kavinsky?”

 

There was something about the way Noah said Kavinsky’s name, or perhaps the word _with_ , that made his skin crawl on the back of his neck. Noah was in the heads of the living in a disturbing way; you never knew to what extent.

 

“Shut up, Noah,” he said emphatically. “I told you it’s not that.”

 

Noah obeyed, and turned his head to the window. Ronan opened his. He had taken a shortcut to the place of the accident, a back road that ran through cornfields and scrubwoods. It smelled like a dream. Like oldness and promise.

 

“Fear or shame?” Noah said suddenly. Ronan startled.

 

“Fear or shame _what._ You creepy bastard.”

 

Noah smiled.

 

“You sure are creepy,” he said. “Which one would you go for.”

 

“But for what.”

 

Ronan felt that he had already gone through that. That at some point he had had to choose, and, definitively, it wasn’t the right choice. Noah shrugged.

 

“You just say it.”

 

Ronan wanted to kick him out of the car. As he was dead, he wouldn’t even have to stop.

 

“Shame,” he heard himself say, in a low voice.

 

They didn’t talk about it again.

 

As they arrived, the moon opened a clearing. Ronan felt grateful about it; he had nothing with a flashlight function on hand and the BMW was parked at a safe distance. They approached the remains of the Camaro. It looked like anything but a car. It had only been a few days, but nature had already taken it in and started to take it back to where it had come from. A thin layer of moss covered the folds of the metal, and spiders had made the most of the holes. There was dirt and seeds on the seats. The blood, already brown, barely stood out amongst the wreck. It was a relief to see it that way.

 

Noah said nothing, likely remembering how shit scared he was when the night horror dug its claw into the windshield. Ronan left the gas can in his hands and struggled with the passenger door. He managed to open it a crack and reached for the glovebox. Gansey always kept a box of matches there.

 

The smell of gasoline pervaded the air, and Ronan found it kind of sacrilegious. The old Camaro seemed to claim another fate, as a home for the creatures civilization had displaced, or a symbol of redemption. Ronan thought about how he had felt, as if he had thrown his heart into the fire, the night he went to look for Kavinsky at the substance party. Then he lit a match, and threw it carefully through the window.

 

For some reason, the memory of a movie in which a car was burned came to his mind. The car was the evidence of a crime, and, a bit later, some street kids would play around the fire with innocence. It was a movie with interconnected stories. Ronan kicked a stone, hurting himself. He remembered that it felt sad, it felt painful, those kids having to play next to that cursed bonfire, smiling those little tragedies.

 

He had watched the movie as a child, beside his father. It was Friday night, and the movie was for adults only, but his father made him room under his arm. The only place in the world where fear didn’t exist, the only place where he didn’t have to ask about anything he didn’t understand.

 

Noah was staring at the fire wordless, the red flames reflecting on his pale face. Ronan looked for a piece of wood among the remains of the telephone pole, and furiously, and eagerly, threw it into the fire. Then he shot Noah a knowing look. They jumped and shouted around the fire like kids, until the night was dark again, until it told the truth again.

 

*

 

Gansey woke him up as if he hadn’t been awake all night. Ronan rolled towards the wall, the dream at the edge of his consciousness, and the _shame._ Apparently, the tattoo obeyed the purpose of being touched rather than the purpose of pissing Declan off.

 

“Ronan,” Gansey insisted.

 

“Fuck off, Gansey,” Ronan resolved.

 

He heard his footsteps approaching the mattress, knees cracking as they bent.

 

“Kavinsky is in the parking lot,” he said, melodramatic.

 

Ronan’s eyes flew open.

 

“You’re fucking kidding.”

 

He felt a familiar hammering in his throat, as he sat up and struggled against the excess light. His throat was going to go to hell before his soul.

 

He approached the window next to Gansey, and he saw the white Mitsubishi out there, attractive and dangerous, parked so that it blocked in the rest of the cars.

 

“What does he want?” Gansey asked, displeased and parental.

 

Ronan shrugged and tore his eyes away. His heart resounded as if his body was hollow. He put on a t-shirt and made his way downstairs. Gansey followed him. When he was with Gansey, his bond with Kavinsky changed entirely. Loyalty to Gansey was sort of an instinct of his, something that seemed like a legacy from his ancestors, subtle and immovable. It hadn’t been a coincidence that he had moved closer to Kavinsky when Gansey was out, it hadn’t even been a coincidence that the excuse had been _Gansey’s_ Camaro. He wouldn’t hesitate a second to beat the shit out of him, if that was what the situation required. Except that this time, fuck. This time, it would hurt him.

 

They approached the Mitsubishi cautiously, the tinted windows prevented them from seeing inside. Kavinsky didn’t seem willing to come out. Ronan looked at Gansey, who raised his eyebrows, and then kicked the driver’s door. Kavinsky didn’t even flinch and Ronan lost patience. He flung the door open, his fists ready to strike, and his chest ready to receive.

 

“What. The hell.”

 

The car was empty and the keys in the ignition. Gansey let out a laugh, Ronan let out the relief and the anger in the same snort.

 

Gansey studied the car and noticed the note, attached to the steering wheel on a Post-it. Ronan had seen it before, just as he had peeked inside and felt his heart skidding hard. He hadn’t wanted to read it. Gansey did read it out loud, with a teasing smile:

 

_This one’s for you. Just the way you like it: fast and anonymous._

 

Ronan took the hit, held it, like a heavy load, and cut his eyes away, trying to look dismissive.

 

“I think he needs to come to terms with his sexuality,” Gansey said, frowning, still looking at the note.

 

There was something worse than having taken the Camaro without permission and having crashed it against a telephone pole while street racing. Something even worse than having allied himself with Kavinsky to learn to steal a new one from a dream, with all the substances involved in the process. Even worse than having _made out with Kavinsky,_ something that he didn’t even dare to think about when Gansey was a certain radius away.

 

“There is no coming to terms with having three balls,” he said, chewing at his wristbands. He guessed the dodge would work better than with Blue.

 

There was something worse in the world than having betrayed Gansey, which was in fact against Ronan’s nature. And it was that Ronan had needed to do it. He had needed to walk that road; not to hurt him, not to hurt him at all, because that was the last thing Ronan would do on purpose, but because he needed to get away to see, to see himself inside. And what-- what was actually the most terrifying thing, was that if he had the chance to go back, he knew he would do it again.

 

A few hours later, when there was nobody at home and the heat impeded human life, Ronan went back to the Mitsubishi. He opened the driver’s door and sat down. He started the engine and revved it in neutral to activate the air conditioning. He examined the details of the dashboard. Kavinsky’s precision was flawless. Everyone was good at their thing, it was clear, since he drove like a clumsy suicidal. Who would have imagined that dreaming was what Henrietta’s most shady guy did best. He seemed the protagonist of a dystopia.

 

Ronan opened the glovebox and a couple of cardboard boxes fell onto the passenger seat. One was diazepam and the other, condoms. Ronan sighed. All that was pretty far from their threat-date dynamic. That was more like a promise of precarious happiness. He took the diazepam box and examined it between his fingers. He guessed he wasn’t the only one tormented by dreams. Fantasy was a dangerous rather than an innocent territory. Ronan moved the seat back and saw the note Kavinsky had left, crumpled on the floor. He took it and put it back on the wheel. _Just the way you like it: fast an anonymous._

 

He understood that Kavinsky felt used. It was the easiest interpretation. He removed the keys from the ignition and closed the car.

 

Back at home, he took his phone and wrote: _Nothing about this is anonymous._ Kavinsky never answered.

 

*

 

A few days later, Ronan had a nightmare. When he woke up, he didn’t remember much, just the fear, just the feeling of being a bomb about to explode. He had a sense of foreboding when he checked that he couldn’t move his body yet, like when he brought something back.

 

Chainsaw pecked his ear fondly, Ronan dropped his eyes from the crack in the ceiling and saw it there, placed with care at the foot of his mattress, counting 23 hours, 54 minutes and 18, 17, 16, 15 seconds. _Fuck my fucking life_ , Ronan muttered. Kavinsky’s words echoed in his head, dilated by the memory. _A bomb. Just like you._

 

The device looked delicate, or maybe that was what he had learned from the action movies he hadn’t seen for years, since there were no nights to prepare to sleep. He wrapped it carefully in a sweatshirt. The countdown went on, threatening, as if life reminded where it leads, every second a little closer. He thought it was absurd to think that time moved _forward._

 

He left his room and checked nobody else was awake. He wrapped the bomb in one more sweatshirt, just in case, and took it out of the house. He searched in his pocket for the keys to his BMW, and first he found the ones to Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi, which was still, impeccable, in the parking lot. He considered it for a moment, but he decided not to take it. Whatever was meant to happen, whatever was meant to be done, the BMW was _his_ car, almost an extension of his body, almost an extension of his instinct. He opened the trunk and left the dream bomb there. _Fuck my fucking life_ , he muttered again.

 

He put the key in the lock to avoid hitting the door, and as he turned it, something touched his shoulder. Ronan jumped, the shock tingling in his hands.

 

“Fucking hell, Parrish, you’re gonna kill me.”

 

Adam smiled like a fucking sunrise. He had wounds all over his arms, he smelled like engine grease and night shift. Sometimes, looking at Adam was like leaning over a precipice. Something warned you in your stomach, but there was something more frightening than the fall.

 

“You leaving?” Adam said, nodding towards Ronan’s car.

 

 _I’m staying,_ Ronan thought.

 

*

 

Adam took off his shoes, and served himself a glass of water. His movements, slow and absent, bared his divided nature, his presence less and less human, more and more mythological. Where was he now if half of his soul belonged to a dream?

 

It wasn’t strange that Cabeswater was a dream of his, beautiful and destructive, powerful and fragile. Adam’s sacrifice, however, had made the forest respond to more than one will, and at the same time, to none of theirs.

 

Ronan hated Adam for that, for his stupid inability to do something with help, for his stupid inability to doubt anything that hit his desire. Now, in the living room at Monmouth Manufacturing, he looked like a thousand-year-old creature rather than a seventeen-year-old boy struggling with hormones and a difficult past.

 

“Adam,” Ronan said carefully.

 

Adam’s eyes were half-closed and he seemed to be falling asleep. For some reason, Ronan was afraid that he would succeed and the sleep would take him somewhere else. _Not death, but his brother, sleep._

 

“You have to make him stop,” Adam said, without raising his voice, without opening his eyes.

 

Ronan’s pulse stopped for a moment, and then it began to race. He had the impression that Adam was inside his mind. That he knew what he had woven with Kavinsky and that he knew he could stop him. Not through violence, which would have been the most feasible option, not through collective cleverness, which would have been the most reasonable option, but through his influence over Kavinsky’s emotions, which was the most secret and reckless option.

 

Adam eyed him. Shame went up his neck and he wanted to leave. It would have been the most sensible option, considering there was a bomb counting down in the trunk of his car, but he was quite far from leaving a half-finished conversation with Adam.

 

“I’ve never been on his side,” Ronan defended himself, wanting to slit his heart open and let him look inside.

 

“You’re not on anyone’s side,” Adam said, as if the universe passed sentence.

 

Ronan got close to Adam and grabbed him by the shoulders, thumbs over his collarbones. He felt like his fingers were sinking into the dirt, his wrists covered by water.

 

“That’s not true,” he said, looking for his eyes. Adam averted them, and Ronan lowered his head. “Damn, Adam. Don’t talk bullshit.”

 

“It’s not me who’s talking,” Adam said, distressed, and unexpectedly, he leapt into his arms like a child looking for comfort.

 

Ronan received him as if he was struck by the wind, closed his eyes and sunk his fingers again into Adam’s skin, feeling the slow pulse of the ley line throb in his body.

 

“You have to make him stop,” Adam repeated, as if he was a bit farther, and Ronan realized that, for once, he was asking for help.

 

“I’m always on your side, Parrish,” Ronan said, and left, hoping his words would be stuck into the air, hoping that Adam would breathe them.

 

*

 

Back in the lot, he searched for his phone in his pocket, and dialed the Fox Way number. After a few impolite words with Orla, Blue came on the phone.

 

“Adam?” she said, cautiously.

 

“It’s Ronan,” Ronan replied, surprised.

 

“Orla said-- never mind.” Ronan understood. He knew that Blue and Adam weren’t fine. “How odd that you call,” Blue continued. “Is anything wrong?”

 

“Yes,” he said. He could feel Blue’s eyebrow quirking up on the other end of the line. “Can we meet?”

 

“I’m going to work now,” she said. “I have a twenty-minute break at half past five. See you at Nino’s back door?”

 

“Right,” Ronan said, looking at his phone watch. There was a while left, but he would have to cope with it.

 

“Don’t do anything stupid while you wait,” Blue said, and hung up the phone.

 

Ronan got into the car and buried his head in his arms. He didn’t dare look inside the trunk again. He went over the old texts on his phone (“w _ould you stop if you knew it was destroying the world?”, “_ _g_ _od that would be awesome”_ ). He thought about Adam holding him, becoming blurred. He didn’t know how the fuck he was supposed to do this without smashing Kavinsky’s face in and without lying to him. Anxiety swirled in his ribs, in his knuckles squeezing his eyes. He had to take it one step at a time. He had to get the BMW out of there in the first place. He put the keys in the ignition and started up carefully.

 

He drove to downtown Henrietta, without forcing the gears and braking at all the speed bumps. He stopped at the traffic light where he used to hang around looking for night races. In daylight, it looked like a completely different scene. Suddenly, he changed his mind. There was no point in going around, moving the BMW about town, vulnerable to any incident. He changed direction and left Henrietta. He searched for an open space, remote enough, discreet enough. The old county fairground.

 

He got out of the car and started walking along the shoulder. He arrived at Monmouth with his temples dripping, the back of his neck burned by the afternoon sun. It was 17:25. Anyone would have thought that he would be late, but now, Ronan was going to _step on it._

 

Driving the Mitsubishi was strange, too smooth, too rough, too new, too appealing. He searched for some music in the glove compartment, without taking his eyes off the road. Kavinsky had left nothing. Just the pills and the condoms. He hadn’t thought too much about it. He imagined Kavinsky buying them in a gas station, thinking of _him,_ thinking of fucking him on some backseat, protected by the night.

 

Ronan wanted to do it. He felt it in his pulse, in his sex, in his right foot as he accelerated again. He thought about the conversation with Adam. _I’ve never been on his side._ He hadn’t told a lie. This was not exactly being on his side. It was something different. Though maybe this was about being more _with him_ than having been on his side.

 

When Blue saw the Mitsubishi approach, she exaggerated an annoyed expression, throwing a kitchen towel over her shoulder, and went back into Nino’s. Ronan rolled down the window and stuck his head out.

 

“It’s me,” he shouted.

 

He parked right there and got out of the car, feeling the urgency hit him harder than the heat.

 

“You must be kidding,” she said, looking at the white car.

 

“No, bro,” Ronan clarified. “It’s not _his_.”

 

Blue made a face.

 

“Listen,” Ronan pressed, looking both ways before continuing. “I have a bomb in the trunk of my car.”

 

“WHAT?!” Blue yelled.

 

“Come on, a little louder,” Ronan said, pointing to the sky with one hand.

 

Blue ran her hand over her forehead.

 

“Ronan, don’t you come to see me at work with a _bomb_ in the fucking car,” she said, looking at the Mitsubishi with suspicion. “And I insist. WHAT?”

 

“It’s in the BMW, smartass. I’m not stupid.”

 

“I hope it’s far from--”

 

“I’m not stupid.”

 

“If you weren’t stupid you wouldn’t have anything that could blow up a building or, otherwise, take you to fucking jail for being a terrorist in the trunk of your fucking car, Lynch.”

 

Blue put her hand on the wall and peeked inside Nino’s to make sure nobody was listening.

 

“Fuck off, Sargent,” Ronan said. “I thought that with you I wouldn’t have to start from the beginning.”

 

Clearly, Blue didn’t take that well. She glared at him, and then sighed.

 

“Okay, what’s the beginning,” she offered.

 

“The beginning is that I dreamt the fucking bomb, Sherlock. And then it wasn’t in the trunk of my _fuckingcar,_ it was at the foot of my _fuckingbed_ , with a 24-hour countdown that made me reconsider the meaning of life and the space-time continuum.”

 

“God, Ronan,” Blue said, shutting her eyelids with her fingers. It looked like a Gansey’s gesture.

 

Blue was silent for a few seconds. She tossed the kitchen towel over her shoulder again and looked both ways.

 

“What are you gonna do?” she said eventually.

 

Ronan closed his eyes, imagining possible catastrophic outcomes.

 

“I don’t know, man,” he said, finally addressing the question. “What should I do?”

 

Blue bit her fingernail.

 

“I guess it all boils down to: (a) you deactivate the bomb; or (b) you make it explode in a safe and distant place.”

 

“Or (c) I dream a solution; (d) I trust that it’s full of confetti; (e) I put it in that shitty Mitsubishi and I park it at the police station; (f) ...”

 

“Focus on the (a) and (b),” Blue interrupted, hesitating a moment. “Or perhaps on the (c). How much time is left?”

 

“Until dawn tomorrow, I suppose.”

 

Blue stayed quiet for another endless minute.

 

“Talk to Kavinsky,” she said finally. Ronan blinked. “I mean, the guy knows about explosives.”

Ronan considered it.

 

“I don’t know. I’m afraid to put a fucking bomb in Kavinsky’s hands.”

 

“Then don’t do it,” Blue said, glancing at her watch. “Just get information.”

 

Blue waited patiently for Ronan’s answer.

 

“You have to go now, right?” he said.

 

Blue nodded.

 

“Just get him to help you,” she said, “or else, let it be him who goes to jail. So we would kill two… problems with one stone.”

 

Ronan rolled his eyes. The little runt was too flower-power to say _birds_ , but he thought of Chainsaw and agreed. Then he thought of Kavinsky and he didn’t.

 

“Okay, short ass” he said, giving her a soft punch on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. Or if not, check the headlines.”

 

Even though Blue smiled mockingly, concern flashed across her face. Ronan shivered.

 

“I’ll be fine,” he conceded.

 

“Do you want me to call you when I’m over?”

 

“I want you to make sure that the others don’t come looking for me.”

 

Blue nodded again and punched him back, a little harder. When Ronan was opening the car door, he heard her voice.

 

“Lynch,” she said.

 

Ronan turned around to look at her.

 

“Don’t do anything stupid for Kavinsky.”

 

The bastard knew it. Fuck.

 

“Neither you for Dick Gansey,” he replied.

 

In that case, all the cards would be on the table.

 

*

 

He waited for nightfall to text Kavinsky. Earlier, he had gone over to church, but something had stopped him at the door. He was aware of an emotion hitting his temples, intense and raw. It wasn’t guilt. It was _fear._

 

“ _We need to talk,_ ” he typed, pressing the send button without looking back. Chainsaw was tearing up a magazine and pilling up the pieces in her cage. The reply came a few seconds later. _“Time and place_ ,” it said, plainly. The lack of the term _lady_ alerted Ronan.

 

“ _At the traffic light,”_ he wrote. There was only one traffic light he could refer to. _“In one hour. I’m carrying your Mitsubishit.”_ Ronan looked at his watch. He didn’t want to take Kavinsky directly to the fairground. He had to sound him out first.

 

The reply was late in arriving. Ronan watched Chainsaw furnish her home with pieces of racing cars. It was a stupid magazine anyway. The buzz of the cell phone startled the bird.

 

“Sorry,” Ronan muttered.

 

“ _Tell Dick you can come by yourself,_ ” the text said.

 

Ronan couldn’t help being pissed off by the comment. Of course, he wasn’t affected by any of the insinuations that oscillated between the lapdog and the furious lover of Richard Gansey. What had bothered him was that Kavinsky thought nothing had changed since the night they went together to look for him at the substance party.

 

It wasn’t like the hostilities between them had ceased, to be honest, but he couldn’t just ignore what had happened. Not their dreams, nor their bodies; he couldn’t ignore that Kavinsky was another Greywaren and now he _knew it,_ that they had mixed the toxicity of their breaths and the purity of their desire. It bothered him that Kavinsky thought that he wasn’t, somewhat, loyal to all that, that he would hide it under the carpet of studied hostility.

 

“ _Tell your sheep the same_ ,” he replied. He restrained himself from adding _asshole._

 

He arrived too early at that cursed corner. The traffic lights, reflected in the asphalt, fed his adrenaline. He wasn’t going to race that night, but his instinct didn’t know it yet. He double parked the car and switched off the engine. Chainsaw was tearing up the upholstery of the passenger seat. Ronan approved of it.

 

Kavinsky stopped his car a few inches from its counterpart. He lowered the window. He was wearing his shades and chewing gum. Ronan opened the passenger window and grabbed Chainsaw.

 

“Lynch, long time no see,” Kavinsky said, revving the engine in neutral. “Nice car. Now things start making some sense.”

 

“That’s not why I’m here,” Ronan said, keeping his composure. “I told you, we need to talk.”

 

“So boring, man,” Kavinsky said, pulling up his glasses. He had a black eye, and part of his nose was bruised too. “Let the girls do the talking.”

 

Ronan rolled his eyes. Kavinsky barked a fake laugh and lit a cigarette.

 

“Okay, what,” he said, closing his eyes as he breathed out the smoke. His lashes caressed the bruise.

 

“It can’t be here,” Ronan said, impassive.

 

“It can’t be here,” Kavinsky echoed, with false disbelief. “Well, Lynch, I don’t know how to take that.”

 

Ronan started the car. Kavinsky smiled wickedly. He was really handsome with his face battered. The light turned green and Kavinsky speeded up.

 

“Fucking hell, Kavinsky,” Ronan muttered, feeling the adrenaline hit him like a drug straight to his brain.

 

It didn’t took him long to catch him. The irregularity of the asphalt vibrated inside his body. Ronan felt euphoric, and he didn’t have time for that.

 

Kavinsky left Henrietta and took a back road. There, it wasn’t possible to overtake him. Ronan flashed the headlights at him. Kavinsky flipped his middle finger throughout the window. A few curves later, Kavinsky left the road to take a dirt track. Shortly after, he stopped and got out of the car.

 

Ronan went to meet him. Kavinsky was wearing a t-shirt with a marijuana leaf and had put his sunglasses on again.

 

“You look like a madman,” Ronan remarked.

 

Kavinsky let out a laugh, cruel and charming.

 

“Look who’s talking: Mr. Big Ugly Bird On My Shoulder.”

 

Ronan looked at Chainsaw sideways and allowed himself a smile. Kavinsky took out another cigarette and lit it, protecting it from the night breeze. Then, he sat on the hood of his car, and tapped his side, inviting Ronan. Ronan cocked his head.

 

“Come on, sweetheart, tell me,” Kavinsky said. “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

 

“You’re disgusting,” Ronan replied, moving away.

 

A few steps further, a precipice fell, and far away in the distance, Henrietta’s lights twinkled like stars. It wasn’t less beautiful for being a teenage cliché. He turned to Kavinsky.

 

“What are we doing here anyway?” he said. “Is this where you bring your girlfriends?”

 

Kavinsky didn’t answer immediately. He took off his glasses, closed his eyes with his fingers.

 

“Good views. I have no girlfriends, Lynch. Seems like you don’t get it.”

 

Ronan sighed. He got it too well.

 

“Would you know how to deactivate a bomb?” he said.

 

Kavinsky’s expression lit up like a match.

 

“Fuck, Lynch, a bomb?” he celebrated. “Looky there, I do like _talking_ about that topic.”

Ronan explained it to him. Kavinsky looked delighted. Ronan explained him that he didn’t want to be arrested. Kavinsky rolled his eyes.

 

“Boring side effects,” he said. “I don’t know why you even care if we’ll be always able to _dream_.”

 

Ronan heaved a sigh. It was the moment to try it.

 

“About that,” he said.

 

Kavinsky raised his eyebrows impatiently.

 

“You have to stop dreaming.”

 

The phrase sounded as heavy as a sentence and as fragile as an impossible wish.

 

Kavinsky let out a careless laugh.

 

“Finally you’ve said something funny,” he said, climbing back on the hood and leaning his back against the windshield.

 

This time, Ronan sat beside him. He gazed at the stars. Under that sky, it didn’t seem so difficult. Ronan was one of those people that paid the price of getting hurt, rather than one of those that jumped the ship of lost causes. But this time, this time he did have to do the right thing, and he knew that it would necessarily separate him from Kavinsky. He was going to pay the price of getting hurt anyway.

 

“The dreams use the energy of the ley line,” Ronan explained. “The energy of the forest. It’s running out and there will be no coming back. We need to stop.” He dropped his eyes from the stars and looked at him. “You and me.”

 

“You and me...” Kavinsky muttered, savoring the words. “It’s curious... the things we share. But we’re different in something basic, Lynch: I don’t try to be _a good person.”_

 

Ronan lowered his head. He thought about Adam, about his voice leaving him. He didn’t dare to look at Kavinsky. That hurt like piercing one’s skin.

 

“Ronan,” Kavinsky said. It was the first time he called him by his first name. “What did you dream when you brought the bomb back?”

 

Ronan sighed. He had been remembering it during the day.

 

“I dreamt that I blew up all your cars,” he said. “And for whatever reason, that made you stop.”

 

Kavinsky grinned and put a hand on Ronan’s shoulder.

 

“You’re lucky that I love blowing things up,” he said.

 

 

*

 

It was Kavinsky who manipulated the bomb. He examined the wires and the timer without batting an eyelid. Ronan, for his part, had to keep his hands in his pockets to hide his shivering. There were 14 minutes left.

 

“How much is the charge? How far do you think we should get away?” Ronan said.

 

Kavinsky didn’t answer, he just grabbed Ronan by the wrist as he put his ear to the bomb. Then, he took it carefully and put it inside the single-axled Mitsubishi. Ronan set the timer on his cell phone, Kavinsky breathed deeply and then said:

 

“Run.”

 

Ronan realized that Kavinsky was not hurrying as much as he could have been. He was getting ahead.

 

“What the fuck are you doing, man?” he said, stepping back to grab his arm.

 

Kavinsky laughed.

 

“You should come to the Fourth of July,” he said for an answer.

 

They reached the scrub wood where they had parked. The timer marked ten seconds. Ronan closed his eyes, didn’t dare to ask God for anything. Kavinsky put his arm around his shoulders, he hid his face in his collarbone. Two… one… The alarm on the cell phone started ringing. Ronan squeezed his lids and then, he opened his eyes. Nothing happened.

 

“What the hell, man?” Kavinsky said, taking the phone from his hands.

 

He checked it for a moment and gave him it back reluctantly.

 

“I don’t know,” Ronan said, dragging his hands over his face. “It’s a fucking dream thing. What the hell can I know.”

 

“Let’s go see,” Kavinsky proposed, walking to the arsenal of Mitsubishis.

 

“No,” Ronan said, grabbing his arm.

 

Kavinsky exhaled in exasperation.

 

“No?” he said. “I haven’t spent all the night _talking_ to leave this halfway.”

 

Kavinsky shook himself free and started walking fast.

 

“Wait!” Ronan shouted. “Kavinsky!” Ronan started running after him. “K,” he said. Kavinsky didn’t turn around. “K! Why do you care? What does this even mean?”

 

Kavinsky stopped. His expression was bitter.

 

“You still don’t get it, Lynch,” he said. “Nothing means shit to me.”

 

*

 

Ronan followed Kavinsky to the Mitsubishis. He still had to keep his hands in his pockets. Kavinsky went straight to the car where they had left the bomb. He opened the door and peered inside with a sarcastic expression. Which in his case could mean that they were going to blow up the next second.

 

Kavinsky turned to Ronan.

 

“What a Disney Princess dream, dude,” he said.

 

Ronan hesitated a moment, then peered inside the faulty Mitsubishi. The bomb had split in two like an eggshell, and among the pieces, a little raven stumbled blindly.

 

“God,” Ronan said, and pressed them hurriedly against his chest.

 

There was no trace of gunpowder or any other explosive. The chick was trembling against his cold hands. He looked for Chainsaw with his eyes.

 

“Do something!” he shouted at her.

 

Chainsaw flew toward the trees, looking offended.

 

“Such a fucking drama,” Kavinsky said, leaning unenthusiastically against another car.

 

“Shut up,” Ronan warned.

 

At that moment he noticed how the life left the animal’s little body. Ronan closed his eyes. He didn’t know which was the worst of all his sins.

 

Saying nothing, he looked for a secluded place. Kavinsky didn’t take part. He dug a small hole with his hands, beside an oak tree, and put the creature there. He knew he was burying a part of himself. He could already feel its emptiness, just above his stomach.

 

When he returned, Chainsaw appeared with some worms in her beak.

 

“You can eat them,” Ronan said. She settled on his shoulder.

 

Kavinsky was still in the same place, looking bored. Ronan didn’t look him in the eyes.

 

“I’m leaving,” he said.

 

He felt Kavinsky stand up behind him.

 

“You always do the same to me,” he protested.

 

Ronan turned sharply.

 

“I don’t know why you care, if nothing means shit to you.”

 

Kavinsky shut his eyes heavily.

 

“So what does it mean to you?”

 

Ronan didn’t answer. He had grown tired of Kavinsky’s endless wordplay, of his inability to name what was actually going on.

 

“Bye, K,” he said, and headed to his car.

 

“Hey!” Kavinsky yelled. “Stop messing me around, man. You’ve had me buttering you up all fucking night!”

 

Ronan kept walking. Somehow, it was done. He only had that pain left, sober and tangible, like a blanket of rain over his shoulders.

 

“Lynch!” Kavinsky insisted, “If you really split, you’re a dead man.”

 

Ronan wasn’t sure he wasn’t.

 

“FINE!” Kavinsky shouted, his voice raised to the maximum. “UP TO YOU. I’LL HAVE TO DREAM SOMETHING TO KEEP ME ENTERTAINED.”

 

Ronan stopped. The blow hurt him in his spine, and this was a different sort of pain. This _burned._ He turned around and went back to Kavinsky.

 

“I thought you said you were going to stop.”

 

Kavinsky smiled, satisfied.

 

“If I stopped,” he argued, “I would join your stupid King Arthur’s club, and it turns out that two things happen, Lynch; the first is that I don’t bow my head to anyone, the second is that I’m not especially into living in the shadow of the gang of fags you have as friends.”

 

Ronan grabbed Kavinsky by his shirt and shoved him against a car. Kavinsky grinned when a side mirror sunk into his back.

 

“Going to kiss me?” he teased.

 

Ronan didn’t answer. He just punched him, again and again, until his knuckles became stained with blood, and the corner of his eyes brimmed over with two tears. He knew Kavinsky was looking for it, but that didn’t make it less unavoidable. _With me or against me,_ he had said, the night he dreamt the Camaro. Now he understood that it was the same to Kavinsky, as long as it wasn’t _without me._

 

Ronan didn’t wipe the tears that slid down the edge of his cheeks. Kavinsky dropped to the ground. He didn’t wipe the blood that slid down his nose.

 

Ronan turned around, kicked a stone and shook his hands. Kavinsky let out a broken laugh.

 

“At least you don’t hit like a girl,” he said, clutching his rib. “In and out, you remember?”

 

Ronan turned back. Kavinsky had opened his palm, offering two green pills.

 

“No fucking way, man,” Ronan said, rushing at him.

 

But he didn’t arrive on time. Kavinsky swallowed the pill and collapsed. Ronan looked for the other one under his body. He feared that Kavinsky would go for the biggest thing, that the ley line couldn’t stand it. He sent Chainsaw back to the car and put the pill in his mouth.

 

The dream softened the edges of his anger. Cabeswater was there, in the distance, alive like the life that doesn’t stop, passing from one being to another, alive like the soul of the world. There was no trace of Kavinsky. He walked towards the forest, slowly, asking. Kavinsky had also taught him to be a better Greywaren.

 

He walked through the shade of the riverbank, touched the water, crystalline and frozen, lay down on a bed of leaf litter. He followed an invisible path, and in a clearing, barely touched by a winter sun light, he saw him.

 

The branches of a huge rosebush surrounded his body, digging into his arms, into his neck, into his wrists. A trickle of blood still ran from his nose. It reminded Ronan of an image of Jesus Christ wearing the crown of thorns. Except for the obvious differences.  
  
“I thought you had come to steal,” Ronan said.

 

Kavinsky shook his head.

 

“I’m a nightmare, Ronan,” he muttered, “and you’re a fucking miracle.”

 

Ronan knelt beside him and, carefully, began to remove the thorns from his body.

 

“Why do you say that,” he asked.

 

Kavinsky lowered his eyelashes.

 

“Because normally to be alive or to be dead is all the same to me, and since you’ve appeared I’m asking myself the question again,” he replied.

 

Ronan sighed. He removed a thorn from his neck, his fingers lingering on his skin for a moment.

 

“I can’t carry that weight, K,” he said. “We each carry ours.”

 

Kavinsky made a sudden movement. The thorns scratched his body.

 

“Then what the fuck are you doing here.”

 

Ronan smiled.

 

“It is an interesting question considering that you’re such a piece of shit.”

 

He removed the branches that covered his face and kissed him. Kavinsky kissed him back, fragile and honest.

 

“You’re just like me,” he muttered.

 

“Yeah, a part of me is like that,” he admitted, “but I try to be more supportive of the other one. You know, one side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you--”

 

“Obviously, you do love fairytales.”

 

Ronan raised his eyebrows.

 

“You are sexist as hell, man,” he said.

 

“Okay, Sargent, I’ll shut my mouth,” Kavinsky replied, displeased.

 

Ronan finished releasing his body from the rosebush. It felt like an eternity, fingers brushing free spots of skin, silence, the noise receding, giving way to the evident.

 

Kavinsky got up. The trees shuddered. Ronan could see the helplessness in his eyes.

 

“I’m going to wake up now, K,” he said. “See you on the other side.”

 

Ronan opened his eyes and found his body lying on the dry grass of the fairground. The smell of dawn filled his lungs. Kavinsky was still asleep. Ronan wondered if they really had shared that dream.

 

A few minutes later, Kavinsky woke up. His eyelashes were wet, his face still covered in dried blood over the bruises. He winced as he sat up, and without saying anything, he lit a cigarette.

 

“What did you dream about?” Ronan asked.

 

He remembered the moment when his father had told him the legend of Pandora’s Box. He was about ten years old; it was a firefly’s night at the Barns. He remembered how shocked he was when he found out that the evil that didn’t escape from the box was _hope._

 

Kavinsky’s eyes twitched for a moment, as if they were shaken by a miniature earthquake. Actually, it had been a barely perceptible gesture. Ronan already knew the answer.

 

“About Fourth of July, man,” Kavinsky said, drawing an explosion with his hands. “It’s gonna be too much.”

 

Ronan got up. Without thinking, he untied a leather bracelet and tossed it to Kavinsky.

 

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.

 

“Hell if I know. I just thought of you.”

 

Kavinsky raised his eyebrows. The smile broke his eyes into thousand pieces.

 

“I’m not going to the Fourth, K,” Ronan decided.

 

Kavinsky said nothing. Ronan looked at him with sharp, naked eyes. Kavinsky closed his.

 

Ronan turned away, felt the world turn around him. He walked to his car, took a breath, and sped up.

 

 


End file.
